Re: [pieml] Labiovelars versus Palatals + Labiovelar Approximant

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Arnaud Fournet"
<fournet.arnaud@...> wrote:

> From: "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...>

>>> 3. it never appears in initial clusters C-l- or C-r (when
>>> most other consonants do)

>> Your hyphenation is confusing; do you mean that [wl-] and
>> [wr-] don't occur? That's also true of modern English,
>> which certainly has /w/.

> the issue was about initial clusters.
> -initial clusters- can you read your own mother tongue !?

I'm talking about initial clusters, as should be obvious from the
fact that I wrote [wr-] with a hyphen. The point is that /w/ is
an English phoneme that does not occur in initial /wr-/ and /wl-/
clusters (though it did in Old English).

> as regards French,
> I was meaning that initial clusters like #wr- and #wl- don't exist,
> but this is only one more feature.

And I was pointing out that since they also don't exist in English,
which certainly has a phoneme /w/, it's a rather unconvincing feature.

> The point was the sound -w- only appears in very limited contexts,
> as a prevocalic component of diphthongues.

So? It's a glide phoneme; why should it behave like a fully
consonantal phoneme? (By the way, every serious linguistic
description of French that I've read gives French three glide
phonemes, /w/, /j/, and /turned-h/.)

> It does not appear elsewhere.

> As your analysis is 100% wrong,
> I understand that you are now trying to create some screensmoke to
> hide this.

Not at all: I'm explaining why I think that you're wrong. (I don't
play that kind of game, and I don't appreciate the suggestion that
I would.) I agree with Rick: you're being misled by the orthography.

> I was expecting this from you, so I'm not surprised.

Watch it: that kind of insult is altogether unnecessary.

>>> Next, this item can always be vocalized as [u] in slow
>>> speech.

>> Irrelevant: that's a characteristic of [w].

> Does this mean Week can be uttered as oo-eek- ?

Yes, if you mean [u'ik]. And it will be recognizable. At least as
recognizable as <loi> pronounced loo-ah.

[...]

>> /w/ is certainly marginal in French, but there are a few
>> minimal pairs, e.g., <loua> [lua] vs. <loi> [lwa].

> Outstandingly Absurd,

> loua is two syllables lou + a
> loi is one syllable lwa

Which is precisely what one would expect of a minimal pair for /w/
and /u/.

> Not to speak abound morpheme boundaries.

> lou-a : root + P3 passé simple
> loi : a single morpheme

> Do you understand what a minimal pair is ?

Yes. I am aware that morpheme boundaries can have phonological
consequences and that many people accordingly use a more restrictive
definition of 'minimal pair' than the one that I was using above; if
your prefer to call <loua> ~ <loi> a near-minimal pair, feel free
to do so.

It may be that French can be given a satisfactory phonemic analysis
in which /u/ has allophones [u] and [w]; I *have* seen such an
analysis of Italian. But the analyses of French that I've seen use
two phonemes, a vowel and a glide. And if there are competing
analyses, I tend to prefer those that are closer to the surface
realizations.

Brian